6.7.1 The dircmp class

dircmp instances are built using this constructor:

classdircmp(

a, b[, ignore[, hide]])

Construct a new directory comparison object, to compare the
directories a and b. ignore is a list of names to
ignore, and defaults to ['RCS', 'CVS', 'tags']. hide is a
list of names to hide, and defaults to [os.curdir, os.pardir].

The dircmp class provides the following methods:

report(

)

Print (to sys.stdout) a comparison between a and b.

report_partial_closure(

)

Print a comparison between a and b and common immediate
subdirctories.

report_full_closure(

)

Print a comparison between a and b and common
subdirctories (recursively).

The dircmp offers a number of interesting attributes that may
be used to get various bits of information about the directory trees
being compared.

Note that via __getattr__() hooks, all attributes are
computed lazilly, so there is no speed penalty if only those
attributes which are lightweight to compute are used.

left_list

Files and subdirectories in a, filtered by hide and
ignore.

right_list

Files and subdirectories in b, filtered by hide and
ignore.

common

Files and subdirectories in both a and b.

left_only

Files and subdirectories only in a.

right_only

Files and subdirectories only in b.

common_dirs

Subdirectories in both a and b.

common_files

Files in both a and b

common_funny

Names in both a and b, such that the type differs between
the directories, or names for which os.stat() reports an
error.